The Sotavento Campaign: Resistance and Counterguerrilla in Veracruz, 1863-1865

To Mexico, the decade of the 1860s led to a convulsed period characterized by the despotic government of Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna as well a devastating civil war, called “The War of the Three Years”, tollowing "The Mexican Adventure" or The second French intervention in Mexico. The game begins right after the battles of May 5th in Puebla and the action of Cerro del Borrego in Orizaba, and continues throughout the campaign in Veracruz, until the withdrawal of French expeditionary troops in 1866. The French player needs to ensure a line of supplies for his troops, establish garrisons as well as conduct operations to locate and neutralize the Mexican resistance strongholds and encampments. The Republican player (Mexican side) needs to recruit forces within the local population, establish military training camps, carry out ambushes and disrupt the French communication lines as much as possible. The security of this route became an issue of strategic importance for the circulation of war supplies and of the different military forces that would march inland; patrolling and keeping it open was a task for different special units, like the Sudanese Regiment and the Foreign Legion. The Guerrilla war would begin, led by veteran officers: Their mission was to maintain a war of attrition, all the time and in the most effective ways possible; a state of harassment for the French invasion and their Mexican allies.